Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares has called on government legislators to stick to a set of stable future regulations for the automotive industry and avoid adding anything that adds “confusion to chaos”.
Speaking to Autocar on a visit to Vauxhall’s Luton factory, Tavares was reacting to the European Union’s plans to allow e-fuel-powered internal combustion engined cars to be exempt from laws that will see only electric cars allowed to be sold from 2036.
Tavares said he welcomed e-fuels as a way to power the 1.4 billion non-electric cars that will be on the roads, even if a full switch was made to EVs for new car sales, and, more generally, an interesting future fuel that his internal combustion engines were already compatible with.
But, he highlighted that the broadening of legislation for e-fuels undermined the regulatory path already set towards battery electric cars at the very time when investments and implementation plans had been set for the next 20 years.
“The first scenario is they don't break the paradigms,” said Tavares on whether e-fuels can prove to be truly carbon neutral and brought down dramatically in cost. “Then we are safe, and we keep on pushing the EVs.
“The second scenario is they break the paradigms. What do we do [then]? Because we still have 12 years, right [before the 2036 ban]? What happens if some of those guys come up with a breakthrough and they say we found a way to reduce the manufacturing costs of the e-fuels tremendously, and now without tax they are in the similar playground?
“Do I have the answers to these questions? No. But you see, this is the big problem of what we are doing. To execute the current strategy you need 20 years. What is the probability that within a 20-year time window nobody comes laterally with a breakthrough saying "I found something which is a much lower cost for the society, a much better result for the planet and much easier to execute?”
Tavares’s underlying point is one against politicians setting regulations that are not technology agnostic, and there are alternative ways to reduce emissions.
He said: “There is no dogma, it's just about the fact that we have been working for a century in the fine tuning of technology. And then suddenly, the outside world would like us to make the same efficiency with a brand new technology that has a very limited amount of time to be optimised.
“Politicians are very respectful, [but] I’m not really sure they are listening. I'm just sharing this observation, not in an aggressive mode because I would not like to be a political leader nowadays. I think that's an impossible job. So my respect to them. But at the same time if nobody asks the difficult questions, then who will?
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I read this as Mr Tarares playing the long game with the regulators. No politician is going to allow e-fuels to become a viable alternative to BEV for volume vehicles: you can see from the comments here that BEV v Combustion has become a tribal war in which one side gets angry despite not having a complete and nuanced understanding of either the complexity of the problem or the big picture beenfits of the available solutions. Even The Church of England has reached for their greenwash pen by joining the 'BEV or you are killing the planet' side.
There is currently no developed regulation around e-fuels, only an agreement to implement something that is yet to be shaped. We all suspect that the EU will take a pragmatic view and only allow a low volume of e-fuel vehicles, probably for cars that would otherwise require large, expensive, CO2 intensive batteries, and possibly only hybrids. They can make a sound case for these vehicles actually improving whole-planet whole-life emissions and reducing both the strain on battery and motor resources and our dependence on China. My best guess is that Mr Tavares is making sure the politicians understand that 1) guidance needs to come quickly and b) it must focus on edge cases, not the established volume vehicle technology roadmap.
Again, I am not anti-EV. I am anti EV-ONLY. The notion that EVs are emissions-free is demonstrably false. Easily. They're getting better, and they may get there. But they're FAR from that now, and for the foreseeable future. ICE continue to get cleaner as well. Most of the research that has been done (and yes, I've looked extensively) by those who are not from either side of this issue shows that, on average, it takes roughly 75,000 miles for EVs to become cleaner than ICE from cradle-to-grave. Cradle-to-grave is what matters, not what comes out of a tailpipe.
Again, it's telling that the only people who say it's "simple as that" refuse to even consider anything that doesn't fit their ideology, and many perpetuate the myth that EVs are "emissions-free." Tellingly, they're usually the only ones to sink to personal insults. About synthetic fuels, they're in their infancy - of course they are more expensive. Today. More and more companies are exploring them and spending billions to do so. That wouldn't be the case if they didn't think there was real potential. To predetermine that they cannot become viable is spectacularly ignorant and closed-minded. To mandate only one "solution" is a certain way to ensure that innovation never happens. The current leading "solution" has numerous flaws.
Ignoring the environmental (and humanitarian) damage done by mining EV materials makes a mockery of real debate or assessment of how to truly improve things. To actually make things better, EVERYTHING must be considered. How can that not be obvious? By the way, the materials used in making batteries and electric motors also has to be transported. As does the oil and coal that powers the overwhelming majority of utilities. More electricity demand means more fuel and coal is transported to - and burned by - those utilities.
Then there's the need for EV infrastructure -- which is VERY far from being anywhere in the galaxy of what will be required. And there's the very real issue, to anyone who doesn't conveniently ignore what they don't want to hear, that China controls the supply of roughly 85% of these materials. Usually there are concerns when one country controls around 30% of something. 85% is unprecedented. There are huge implications to give any single nation that level of power and control. And how environmentally friendly is China...
ALL notions of "this is the best - it's simple" are foolish and counterproductive. We MUST allow for other possibilities and encourage innovation. If EV proves to be the best, then great. But we'll never really know if we wilfully ignore the downsides (or even that there are downsides). Moreover, we'll never really know if we refuse to even consider alternatives.